Confessions of a Migrating Intern

I have now been at FamilyLife for four weeks. I'm finally starting to feel like I'm apart of things now. It's amazing that I have become comfortable with my surrounds since my surroundings keep changing. I have moved cubicles THREE times since I have been here in just four weeks.

First I had E's cubicle. It was very clean, it even had a spare drawer where I could put my stuff.

Next was D's cubicle. It was NOT clean, and his drawers were overflowing. On a positive note, one of his drawers was filled with kit-kats and I had a view out of the window.

Now I am in J's cubicle. It's so clean there isn't a trashcan. But there is a lava lamp, and every morning I turn it on and I use it as my personal hand-warmer when my fingers turn blue (it's ICY in this office!).

At each cubicle I have had people come by to say,"E, you look a lot different" or "D, you've grown hair!", and even, "J? Is that you? I didn't recognize you at first!" After hearing these jokes a countless number of times, I've come to expect them from every single person that walks by. And even though I'm kind of tired of these jokes, common workplace etiquette says that I should just play along and pretend that it's the first time I've heard it.

Malfunctioning

I've always thought of design as a set of restraints and obstacles and it is the designer's responsibility to overcome these. When working with clients, you'll have color restraints, financial restraints, time restraints. And then of course, during the design process you will have composition obstacles, content obstacles, etc. On a normal day overcoming these restraints and obstacles is difficult enough. Today, my brain is malfunctioning, and I can't even get to the point where I can worry about these obstacles.

Here is one example. Today in Photoshop I had created a layer just to play around with. After ten minutes I decided that the layer wasn't adding anything to the design so I dragged the layer down to the trashcan in the layers toolbar. Then I noticed that I had another of the same layer. I thought to myself, "I don't remember copying this layer....oh well, I'll trash it, too". The same thing happened again, over and over again. I had about ten of these stupid layers built up.

If you know Photoshop at all, you are probably thinking, "Wow, Julie must have been dragging the layer to the "copy layer" button which is right next to the "trash" button. You would be correct in thinking this. I had copied this layer over and over and over and over again, all the while getting frustrated that I wasn't making any progress in trashing the layer.

Progress isn't happening today, unfortunately. I have been making stupid mistakes like this all day. Survival is key. Good design might have to wait. We'll see how I do after I finish my lunch break.

Battle of the Wills

This last week has been an epic battle of the wills. Usually I lose these types of battles, but I am pretty set on winning this particular battle.

If you remember me talking a couple of weeks ago about my storyboard project, you would recall that I was stressed about completing massive amounts of work by that Friday. Well, the good news is I worked like crazy and actually did manage to finish. The bad news is that they had more work planned for me. One of the thirty second commercials turned into a three minute music video. That means a lot more sketching. Since it was for the same client I figured that I had an obligation to see the project to completion so I grudgingly took the project on, while politely telling him that it would take me a bit longer because of my internship.

He then asked me if I would like to work on another commercial for him. I began to panic. How was I going to handle extra work while devoting my time to my internship? Then I realized,"Hey, dummy, you can say no to stuff like this! Stand up for yourself!" So I did. And I got a high from it.

Thankfully, that high has carried into this week. I've needed it. I have gotten an email and two texts asking me to do this other commercial. Quote "We really need you to do the ______ commercial, and we need you to get it to us by Wednesday. Thanks". That seemed slightly pushy to me. It didn't even seem to give me the option to decline. But I did anyways..over and over again. Who knows, maybe I'm just angry because they asked me if Payton was such a controlling husband that he wouldn't let me have my own email (we have a shared email).

Interning

I just finished my first week at FamilyLife as an intern in the web graphics development department. Whew, what a week! Already I feel like I have learned a lot and improved my skills. But I know that I have a lot more learning to do. The scary thing is, they've pretty much given me carte blanche as far as my projects are concerned. (I almost would prefer not to have that freedom since I feel slightly incompetent in the area of web design).

My two main projects are the website for the LifeReady Woman and the redesign of the MomLife blog. Since the web design team is made up of just men, they found that it would just make sense to have the only female work on those two projects. While I am female, I feel like that doesn't give me the knowledge to design the LifeReady Woman website. The other day, I was stuck on my design. The main problem was that I couldn't figure out how to design a website when I had no idea what the content would include. So I got the bright idea to visit the LifeReady Woman website to research it....then I realized, "Oh, it hasn't been created yet, because I'm creating it". That was just one of my bright ideas this week...out of many.

On another note, I really enjoy working at FamilyLife. It's an awesome environment, and I feel like any stupid things I do will be dealt with patiently by the people around me. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that they will continue to be patient for the next 9 weeks!

Is it really an opportunity?

It never surprises me when someone asks me "Hey, would you like to design our team t-shirt?" or "Would you mind making a flyer for such and such event?" or "I saw a painting blah blah blah could you paint one like it?" While these projects never excite me like my own sketches and paintings, I am always happy to help out. It does frustrate me though, how most of this stuff is not good to put in my portfolio. Copying the idea of a painting isn't portfolio-worthy.

But this week I decided that I had come across a real opportunity. A small PR company asked me if I could help them with a campaign pitch for their client. They have four commercial concepts and they needed a sketch artist to lay out a storyboard for each of the commercials. I was thinking "Wow, this would be great for my portfolio!" and "Wow, I could maybe make some good connections!" I also thought that the process would be exciting and fun.

But after meeting with the PR company I realized how completely unexciting and unfun this process would be. Most of the time I don't mind doing free work for people. But I feel like I am being taken advantage of. In a three day period I somehow have to have four storyboards finished (that is a lot of drawing!)

Is this really an opportunity? Probably, but it's a pain right now. But if I am presented with the same opportunity later on, I think I will have to decline. This is too much work to do for free.